New nuts and bolts

When I started this humble blog, my plan was to take a walk a day, camera in hand, and create a mini-essay around the best picture I captured. That's still the intention, but as winter deepens and deepens, it's getting harder to find time for a walk, what with the seemingly endless tasks that revolve around the care and feeding of wood stoves and the constant shoveling of driveways, stairs, paths, and the like. It's a lot of work to live in the country, particularly in winter, and the toil takes a toll on necessary equipment. Today, with Winter Storm Marcus scheduled to make his presence known by nightfall—the forecast is calling, ominously, for quite a bit of freezing rain, in between long stretches of snow—I spent time close to home, getting ready. At the top of my priorities list was rebuilding my trusty old Union curved-handled, back-protecting shovel. After at least 10 winters, the handle was falling off. I figured out a way to rebuild it, operated, and, soon enough, it was ready for business. Maybe I should have been a surgeon. Or a mechanic.